Its a dance! You know all those fancy coordinated dances you see in Jane Austen films? Think that but more jumping lively. Think lines of partners spinning people and dosey-doeing and the like. Now imagine all that happening with people who just learned the dance combinations in about 3 minutes and you'll have an accurate picture of my Saturday night.

So how did I end up at such an event? Well I am aided and abetted in finding interesting and slightly unusual (at least for this Canadian) events by my little expat cohort in Greenwich. Everyone has been really keen this month to come up with things to do. I think I'm not the only one coming out of a winter hibernation. So I've got a pretty packed schedule of shows and events for the next month. One of the girls turned up this dance event in honour of St. Patrick's day. Despite having only the vaguest of ideas about what this might be like, I figured why not?
Now I have to admit I was a bit wary of what this would entail. When I heard Irish folk dance, at first I had some bad flashes of River-dance. Lots of bobbing up and down in place. Rest assured you will not look like river dance. It was actually really fun and pretty social since. Most of the dances required getting into groups of 4 or 6 pairs so we managed to meet a few other people. And with everyone at the dance being solidly in the amateur category, we were all muddling through it together. Be prepared to really move though. I didn't really know how energetic all those dances would be. We were all exhausted afterwards and everyone had sore legs the next day.
If you are game to try out a Ceili, I have some tips for you before you go:
  1. Wear good flat shoes. Ones that you feel comfortable jumping around in and don't hurt your feet. While my little black boots were okay during the evening, my feet have really paid for the experience the last few days.
  2. Dress to stay cool. While Ceili in no way requires workout gear (you don't need to really move that freely), but you will get moving and we were all feeling really warm after a few dances.
  3. Know your right from your left and your clockwise from your counter-clockwise. If this is a challenge for you (and it is for me... especially the clockwise thing), you will need to be prepared to bump into many, many people. Luckily, you won't be the only one so its not too embarrassing.
With that you are all prepared to go out out and do some jigging, kick-stepping and swing your partner round. Enjoy!

I've talked a bit about vintage as an ethical option in a previous post, but I share a bit more of my thoughts about it as an ethical shopping option.

Vintage has a lot of things going for it from an ethical stand point. Vintage shopping falls under that re-use category of ethical practises. Since the garment has already been produced, buying it has a really low environment impact. No need to produce more materials or put in more labour. You are also preventing something from ending up in a landfill.

On the ethical labour front, you're unlikely to know whether the garment was originally produced with higher labour standards. It depends once again when it was made, where it was made and what the labour laws were like at that time. On the other hand, you are not contributing to more fast fashion items being produced. Some points for that!

You are also likely to be supporting a local business or person when you buy vintage. With a few exceptions, most vintage stores are small businesses, not big chains. A fair like I went to the other day, you have a direct one-to-one support to someone, which always feels nice to me.

On the other hand...

Vintage is obviously more selective in what they sell than just straight up used clothing. Which means unlike your local charity shop, they are more likely to be traveling or transporting purchases over greater distances.  Most communities don't have an endless supply of good vintage items. While its still less environmental impact than new, its footprint may be higher than some types of used-clothing.

Another thing with vintage (and used item) is that of course, it does rely on people throwing things away/buying more than they use. While it might be nice to imagine we are all swapping things between each other, thats not really the case. The reason we have so many options of used/vintage items is because of hyper-consumerism. Something to think about.

Finally, vintage can come with a whole host of size and style dilemmas. Vintage clothing sometimes was designed assuming you have very different undergarments (pointed busts anyone?) You might hate things in your size and love something that won't fit. Or just not feel the 50's vibe. All of these make it difficult to shop. And buying something that doesn't fit or isn't your style will just mean yet another item in your closet that is unused.

Every ethical option has its ups and downs. For me, I find the most important thing with vintage is to be really realistic about whether I will wear something. I might love the cut of a 50's dress or 60's coat, but that doesn't mean it will make it into my real-life wardrobe. Save your cash and vintage shopping points for things you will get the mileage out of. 

Back in December I came across a list of Christmas markets in a Timeout Magazine. Much to my joy (because there were a lot more markets than I could get to over Christmas) some of them were regular markets that occur once a month. Top of my list was a visit to the North London Vintage Market and this month I made the trek to North London to check it out.

I haven't spent a lot of time in North London, and journey was a bit of an adventure in itself. We ended up having a nice walk through a bit of Highate woods on our way there. It wasn't the best day for a trek but I've noted it among my parks to explore further at a later date.


The market was smaller than I expected and we arrived late in the 2nd day, but it still had a really good selection of vintage goods. I would say its a solid vintage market with a wide range items. Sometimes vintage markets have a bit of a focus. Some lean more towards clothes or houseware or collectables, but I think it had a real mix. Especially given it had been running already for a few days.

Some of my personal highlights included:

A good collection of sewing notions including vintage spools of threads, wonderful collection of buttons, including many of them in complete sets (making them much easy to work with). There was also one woman with a good collection of vintage patterns. Finding truely vintage patterns can be hard. You get a lot of 80's and 70's but the 50's and 40's are much harder to come by.

There was also a wide range of vintage jewelry. There were earings with posts galore and a lot of compacts and pinss. Post earings aren't very comfortable but unless you are really trying to preserve their value, many jewelers can change them for you.

On the clothing front, they had everything from coats to sweaters to skirts and trousers. I was very tempted by an 50s swing coat with velvet collar but I resisted.

I was also very tempted by all the vintage kitchenware which I always love. However, my kitchen is almost overflowing and more kitchenware is pretty impossible.

I would definitely visit to it again, though I might go earlier in the weekend next time. Its a small market but a goody.

Note: I didn't feel comfortable taking photos inside the venue, so I've borrowed some from their blog (hope they don't mind!)
February is over and there are already flowers here!

I'm usually use to something more like 'February is over and hopefully there will be no more -15C days!'. To my dear friends in Toronto who have suffered the coldest winter on record, you have my symthpathy. Please believe me when I say I share these pictures of spring in the spirit of hope and not in the spirit of mocking. Okay, maybe a tiny bit mocking but only in revenge for the pre-Christmas snow images I was sent in December. 

Going from a slacking January to an event packed February has been a bit of a leap. I feel like I manage to fit a bunch of things in, but, of course, there were also things I missed. Kind of tried to go from zero to 100 and that didn't always work. However, overall I think it was a good month

What I Did:
  • Visited two of the historical palaces in London Hampton Court and Kensington
  • Walk through the interconnecting parks between South Kensington and Westminster
  • Got up super early to dance at Morning Gloryville
  • Started 6 week French course- more on this to come!
What I Missed:
  • Learning Beyonce dance moves to 'Who Rules the World' at Shop, Drink, Do- stupid shoulder injury got in the way. Sadly this conflicts with my french but maybe in April
  • Drop in Drawing classes in the National Portrait Gallery- physio for said injury ended up being on the same night but big hopes for this month!
What I Bought
So I managed to cut back on most of my shopping for the month.
  • New work shoes. They aren't from an ethical clothing store per say but are made in Portugal. I've been afraid to wear them outside with the rain but I've been sporting them around the office.
  • Tried new product line Faith in Nature. Really loved it and definitely will be trying other things. Maybe a review coming up!
So for March, I'm pretty packed with my French course, but I see posts on Vintage markets, irish dancing and theatre coming your way so stay tuned.

Please post, tweet or facebook ideas if you want me to write more on anything! 


Would you get up at 5:30 am to go to a dance party? I WOULD! And do!

Introducing one of my favourite events I've attended so far in London, Morning Gloryville. The event is a dry rave that is held once a month, on wednesday morning between 6:30-10:30 am. This is not an after-party. Its a chance to rise and shine and dance.

So the getting up part is generally awful (but then I find getting out of bed generally awful). And it was very dark and rainy walk. But you have to ignore the tiny voice that says 'why are you doing this?' and trust it will all be good when you get there.

Here is us pre-dancing. Note: we are tired happy and reasonably put together. We will contrast this to our post-dancing looks later on in this blog.

So Londoners are not morning people (this is the dance floor at 7 am). We were pretty early and people were only just getting going.
But it fills up really quickly and all of a suddent its totally packed full! Dress code for this tends to be somewhere between fancy dress, pajamas, and workout gear. Also dancing on the stage, is highly encouraged.




And so we dance!

And the dancing leads to thirst which leads to smoothies! Green smoothies are the best. Along with the purple smoothies... though the yellow ones are good too. Hey just any smoothy at this point!

And here we are post event! One of us had to leave early because sadly there is that whole work thing we have to do. In contrast to pre-dancing photo, much more disshelved (okay we just going to go there and say really sweaty and messy). And those giddy expressions. Yeah this could easily be an end of a night out photo. That high is all natural my friends! That is what you get when you mix extreme fatigue with 2 hours of dancing early in the morning.


















There are morning gloryville events all over the world! See if there is one near you!
http://morninggloryville.com/

One of the challenges I have found in trying to do more and buy less is literally the act of finding things to do. Sadly no one has created a website of entertaining, crafty and/or slightly childish things to do in London. Right now I'm using a mix of resources to find my inspiration.

1. Event Websites/Newspapers
For Toronto I use to look at BlogTO. For London there is Timeout London or the Londonist. I actually prefer the weekly publication of Timeout to the websites. The website overwhelms me. You can try to search by neighbourhood or by interest, but even that sometimes just gives you way too many results. The weekly publication, however, can be flipped through at your leisure.

Best For: When you feel uninspired on what to do
Downside: featured events can get quickly booked up because of wide readership

2. Adverts on the Tube (and elswhere)
I've noticed that ads for museums and shows probably make up 30% of all advertising boards here. Almost all the big theatre, dance, music and museum events have ad space. Jot down anything you see that might be interesting so you can look up the details later.

Best For: Hearing about the latest shows
Downside: Only the big spaces can afford this sort of advertising

3. General Event Spaces
My two favourite so far are DrinkShopDo and Doodle Bar. I originally found both of these in Timeout. But now I watch their event pages for interesting things to do. These are both venues that hold a wide variety of events from crafting nights to drinks and dancing to film screening and everything in between.

Best For: Interesting workshops and wacky nights out
Downside: Hard to find and events often book-up so you need to plan ahead
4. Musuem and University Public Events
Grab monthly to-do guides or check website pages. There are usually a list of talks or gallery tours or late-night event. Some art galleries do art classes and some museums plan very lively events around certain collections or shows. You will be both culturally enlightened and amused.

Best for: Talks and Tours
Downside: Often really big events, not the best if your goal is to meet new people

5. Twitter
A bit of strategic following can put you in the loop about events, epecially small ones. I follow a lot of people involved in ethical fashion and a lot of them re-tweet events. Look for people with your interests and who live more or less in your area to hear about the best options.

Best for: last minute plans
Downside: be prepared to get disappointed sometimes because something is posted last minute but you already had other plans.
People in London are always telling me how there is more designated green space in London than any other city. At first this surprised me. It always seemed to me to be a lot of concrete, stone and tightly packed buildings, but then I realised they meant that there are more parks.

And there are a lot. The other weekend, I took in a few and spent almost 3 hours wandering the interconnecting parks of Kensington Park, Hyde Park, Green Park and St. James Park. All my photos are of this lovely day. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful walk. While we were walking, a Canadian friend who was with me commented that English parks seem more like gardens compared to the parks she grew up with. That got me thinking about parks in places where I've lived and how different they are.


 Toronto and Victoria
Growing up in Canada, I would say there were two types of parks. One was where they put children's play equipment and sports fields. You went there to 'play'. The other type, are more a bit of 'wilderness', for the lack of a better explanation. Whether its the cliff path in Victoria or High Park in Toronto, they kind of have this 'undeveloped' feel - almost like attempts to preserve wilderness, even in the middle of a city. But they also make it accessible to people by winding a few paths through the park.With many trees and winding paths, you can seemingly walk alone in many of them, even on a busy day.


Chicago
Now the parks in Chicago are less wilderness and more groomed. But what I really loved was that in the summers, the edges of all the parks would be lined with people parking and cooking. BBQ grills would appear, along with coolers, tents, chairs and tables - all unloaded from the back of vehicles. Families would be there from 9 or 10 in the morning into the early evening. It was as if the parks became giant backyards. So the parks were more social scenes than places to escape.


London
London parks I've visited definitely have that promenade feel (though I might be projecting historical imaginings on them). They are full of people strolling and 'out for a day in the park'. Really social places, but perhaps a bit more restrained than Chicago. Plenty of picnics, but less, shall we say, 'equipment'. Turning a section of the park into your own personal backyard is probably forbidden. Now I'm pretty sure 'commons' versus city parks have different rules, so it might be possible elsewhere. I would say your typical London park outing would be to walk a bit, sit on a bench, feed some birds, get a cup of tea and done!

What do I like better? I'm not sure because the escape feel is really nice, but it seems to me that in many ways the Chicago and London parks are used by more people. Maybe that's just the layout? I'm not sure.

At the end of the day I'd really like a mix. I'm happy to stroll London's parks but I also would be game for a bit more urban wilderness and if anyone knows of any park BBQ's please let me know!